Monday, October 29, 2007

Sheep grazing in a peat field in Donegal County. They're spray painted like that after they're sheared each spring to provide a quick way to identify who they belong to from afar.

Meenaclady in County Donegal right across from Tory Island.

View from our bedroom in the hotel in Gweedore, far Northwestern corner of the country. Gweedore is actually a completely Irish speaking area - and English was hard to come by. The shipwrecked boat in the picture can be seen up close a few images down.

Sunset at The Giant's Causeway, Northern Ireland.

Looking back over the cliffs close to Portrush, Northern Ireland.

Decaying boat run aground in Gweedore (Northwestern corner of Ireland).

(If you click on the pictures, you can see them larger)

The trip was lovely, though it rained the majority of time we were there - and was a "bit" blustery. Think sustained winds of close to 60 mph. with gusts topping 80. We flew into Dublin and rented a car (which was "upgraded" to an SUV). Sigh. The roads there are far too narrow for SUVs, never mind the cost of gasoline in something that large. We spent the first night in Gweedore, Ireland (GaothDobhair) - in the far northwestern corner. Gaoth refers to an inlet of the sea at the mouth of the Crolly River. It is the boundary between Gweedore to the north and the Rosses to the south. Dobhar is an old Irish word for water. GaothDobhair translates as the aqueous estuary. The next day we slept in a little and then traversed across to Northern Ireland along the coast. Now, Ireland uses the Euro and measures distances by kilometers. Northern Ireland (part of the U.K.) uses the Pound Sterling and measures distances by miles. We had to quickly do conversions in our head as the Pathfinder only had kms on the speedometer.

We drove to The Giants Causeway on the northern coast, and then back down to Belfast and then through to Dublin. Our flight left early the next morning, and honestly after all the travelling we'd done. We'd upgraded to business class and we lucked out and had the new lay flat seats on American. Loved them. When we got home yesterday we just sort of chilled with the kittens, and decided to take the day off from anything strenuous.

Today I got the results back from my genetic testing. We have a 1 in 1,128 chance of Down Syndrome and a 1 in 10,000 chance of the other two trisomies they tested for that I don't honestly remember what were. Huge relief.

Patrick's taking the remainder of our earnest money to the real estate agent today. We close on Nov. 15, so it's only about two weeks away. We're hoping to move that following Saturday - so we're starting to pack up the apartment, get utilities set up, etc.